Farmers along the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and Norway have been carrying seaweed up from the shore to spread on their fields for at least a thousand years. They did not know about cytokinins or auxins or trace mineral complexes. They knew that the fields fed with seaweed grew better crops, and that knowledge was passed down through generations without needing a scientific explanation.
The science came later. And when it did, it confirmed what coastal farmers had always known — the ocean, in its seaweed, had packaged something that the soil needed and that no land-based source could replicate.
Marine algae evolved in one of the most challenging environments on earth — subject to constant movement, salinity changes, UV radiation, and temperature variation. To survive, they developed sophisticated internal chemistry: compounds that protect cells from stress, hormones that regulate growth under difficult conditions, and mineral concentrations that land plants rarely encounter.
When that chemistry is extracted and applied to land plants, it activates similar stress-response and growth mechanisms. The cytokinins in seaweed promote cell division and delay senescence — the natural ageing process of leaves. The auxins support root initiation and lateral root branching. The betaines — compounds seaweed uses to manage its own water balance — help land plants retain moisture during heat and drought.
This distinction matters. Seaweed extract is not a fertiliser. Its NPK content is negligible. What it contains are signal molecules — compounds that tell the plant to grow, to root, to flower, to resist. The plant responds to these signals by deploying its own resources more efficiently.
This is why seaweed works best when used alongside a proper nutrition programme. Vermicompost provides the nutrition. Cocopeat provides the structure. Seaweed extract activates the system — it is the catalyst that helps everything else work better.
The seaweed in Prahas Seaweed Extract is sourced from responsibly harvested marine algae — primarily Ascophyllum nodosum and Sargassum species, both of which have the highest documented concentrations of plant-active hormones among marine algae. It is cold-processed to preserve the fragile hormonal compounds that heat treatment would destroy.
Mohit understood the elegance of seaweed as an input — that something grown in water could strengthen something grown in soil, that the ocean and the earth are not separate systems but connected ones. That connection is what Prahas is built to honour.